Trump is shredding America’s pioneering work on resettling refugees

Trump’s executive order will end up costing more and put America at greater risk.

The most successful humanitarian system of the modern era, the American refugee resettlement program, could soon receive another a near-fatal blow. Massive resettlement cutbacks by the Trump administration (to a historical low of 18,000) have already sent reeling the mechanisms of help, sidelining them at a time when record global human displacements have increased and needs have multiplied.

On Sept. 26, new Executive Order 13888 allowed state and local jurisdictions to veto refugee resettlements within their borders, an oblique attack on resettlement. Further, the executive order required states and localities to agree in writing by Jan. 21 to receive refugees, or the federal government would not send more. On Wednesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the order, yet the issue is still very much alive and troubling. To date, seven states remain “undecided” and one, Texas, has formally announced its withdrawal from the resettlement program.

The shredding of America’s 40-plus years of pioneering work to develop a national refugee resettlement program, the envy of the free world, signals a national marker, a seismic shift in the nation. This threat is especially galling to me, as I played a leading role in 1979 to bring the pieces of a national program together and then directed our country’s role in it for many years thereafter.

It all started with the end of the Vietnam War. After U.S. troop withdrawals, political, policy and ideological divisions sprang up in the homeland, with important reverberations. There was near condemnation of our national defense apparatus, just as our Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, was ramping up. The war’s aftermath and the Watergate scandal brought significant congressional restrictions on presidential flexibility. The War Powers Resolution and a host of constraints on foreign aid, arms exports and intelligence sought to constrain presidential flexibility to act independently on foreign policy. Our troops received a shoddy welcome home, and the overall mood of the country was bleak.

In this environment, we discovered the need for a governmental capability to rescue hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of trapped allies left behind in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. They would be refugees. The country would need to work constructively in refugee resettlement. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and deputy Warren Christopher recruited me to take on the job of developing that capability and getting it quickly operational.

In Southeast Asia, we were dealing with a global problem that required global solutions. President Jimmy Carter (and later President Ronald Reagan) decided that a broad American response would involve all levels of government, business, entertainment and voluntary sectors, the faith community, partner governments, international organizations and concerned citizens. We found that most global refugee issues the world confronted then could be addressed, as they can today, through safe initial asylum, voluntary repatriation and regional settlement. Small numbers of severely persecuted victims required resettlement outside their region in welcoming countries like the United States, Canada, Australia and many others. In Southeast Asia, extreme persecution by the victorious communist government denied any solutions but third-country resettlement until conditions later improved.

As a first order of business, we proposed and Congress enacted the Refugee Act of 1980, setting out directions, responsibilities, authorities and linkages. At that time, the regulation of immigration to the United States, including refugees, was already a federal responsibility codified in the Immigration and Nationality Act. That authority was further amended by the Refugee Act of 1980 to establish “a permanent and systematic procedure for the admission to this country of refugees of special humanitarian concern to the United States, and to provide comprehensive and uniform provisions for their effective resettlement.”

The Refugee Act also established a comprehensive framework for resettling refugees that involved cooperative efforts from the federal government, state and local governments, and nine privately operated resettlement agencies. This commitment stood in direct line with our history and national character.

The State Department was to select, enter into cooperative agreements with, and provide funding to private resettlement agencies to conduct resettlement. Working with partners, the State Department was also to develop a national plan for placing refugees in locations throughout the country after reviewing applications from agencies. Those applications were to detail steps taken by the agencies to consult with state and local governments. The State Department was also to meet regularly with resettlement agencies to assess resettlement locations, situations and conditions. The key thing to remember here is that intergovernmental consultations and communication, the key elements the executive order purports to foster, were foundational from the beginning.

The 1980 Refugee Act grants ultimate refugee resettlement authority (including where refugees resettle) to the federal government by statutorily requiring only that the State Department consult with states and localities when making placement decisions. The 2019 executive order goes further, granting veto to states and localities, thereby contravening the federal government’s statutory authority. Two federal courts have recognized that the consultation requirement is “not intended to give states and localities any veto power over refugee placement decisions, but rather to ensure their input into the process and to improve their resettlement planning capacity.”

The State Department was to enter into cooperative agreements with the resettlement agencies to provide funding for services refugees would require in their first 30 to 90 days in the United States, including housing, essential furnishings, food, clothing, orientation and assistance with access to other social, medical and employment services. The Refugee Act specified that the State Department “may not delegate to a state or political subdivision the authority to review or approve such grants or contracts,” such as President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13888 envisions.

After the initial period, the 1980 Refugee Act assigns responsibility for federal coordination for refugee resettlement to Health and Human Services, which reimburses states for refugee-related costs, such as social services support, medical services and language education. These funds often flow through state refugee resettlement coordinators, some of whom actively oversee and meet with resettlement agencies and other service-providers to refugees.

Executive Order 13888 imperils government efforts to take full account of secondary migration of refugees, i.e., when refugees leave their initial placement site and move to another location, particularly one vetoing federal placement and support mechanisms. Academic studies from 2012 to 2013 showed that between 16% and 17% of refugees moved to another state within eight months of initial placement. Research shows that states and localities that veto initial refugee resettlement may nonetheless become home to refugees through secondary migration, but without benefit of customary support.

Significantly, nearly all states have agreed to continue accepting refugees. Of the remaining eight states, only Texas has formally decided to halt further admissions. Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas has been left with a big Southwest border problem and the state cannot afford further spending on it. The state’s two leading newspapers have severely criticized this decision, saying it is unthinkable that a prosperous state like Texas cannot afford to help vulnerable refugees.

I believe the governor’s argument is spurious. His decision would have the unintended consequence of humanitarian applicants coming to Texas as unvetted asylum-seekers. By rejecting refugees, he forgoes the most cost-effective means of reception and integration, the most seriously vetted entrants and therefore the safest, and the most heavily supported by partner humanitarian organizations.

My recent book, We’re in Danger! Who Will Help Us? Refugees and Migrants: A Test of Civilization, argues that many of our recent global humanitarian tragedies resulted from rejecting the proven “global humanitarian cooperation” system favoring refugee resettlement in favor of the less effective “political asylum” system, wherein unvetted applicants self-select asylum location, timing and solutions. With the governor’s decision, Texas will be repeating that mistake, in my view.

Now, 40 years later, I serve as amicus curiae, with two other former heads of the State Department refugee program, in support of a federal suit brought (in Maryland) by three refugee resettlement organizations which maintain that Executive Order 13888 is fundamentally inconsistent with the Refugee Act of 1980 and undermines the purpose that it is designed to serve. U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte blocked the executive order temporarily. However, the administration will almost certainly appeal it. As we believe the Refugee Act established the primacy of the federal government in matters concerning the placement of refugees, our brief argues that the act’s framework already calls repeatedly for consultations with states and localities in the placement and resettlement of refugees based on a national plan.

3. Prevents the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration from considering significant factors when making initial placement decisions.

4. Purports to fix consultation and communication problems that do not exist.

5. Prevents the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration and HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement from considering and responding to the impact of secondary migration (moving from the initial resettlement site to another state or locality).

But above all, Trump’s executive order will take a sledgehammer to the past 40 years of work toward establishment of a truly national refugee system for America supported by all stakeholders.

I believe that for most of the 40 years after 1980, America’s compassionate spirit, initially dormant, was awakened, and it thrived. More than 3 million refugees were resettled in our 50 states, and about half that number in other partner countries. It was not uncommon to go into any church, parish or synagogue and find congregations working to help assimilate refugees into their communities; a similar welcoming spirit could be seen in participating secular organizations.

Overseas, about 10 million to 15 million refugees were also being assisted each year by our generous assistance. I was especially pleased to see that American and allied perseverance were able to bring the Indochina political crisis, the contributor of many of those refugee flows, to a compassionate and equitable conclusion in the late1990s. That is the American people’s can-do spirit - now under threat – that we cannot afford to lose.

James N. Purcell is board chair of USA for IOM. He was previously director general of the International Organization for Migration in Geneva and director (assistant secretary) of the State Department’s bureau for refugee programs. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.